Free Woodworking Plans, Patterns & Projects

Wood, a material that has the capability to create stunning things given the amusing crafts, skills and experience. The gifted craftsman is the ones who work on the projects repetitively to learn at least a single thing from each project. A quintessential art as it is, the art asks for a little more handwork than how delicate the designs seem to be. You can make amazing things out of the wooden picket boards and the wooden logs with the right kind of talent and exquisite workmanship. To gain the insignificant wooden board and turn into a fine design requires the fuel of the craftsman which is why woodworking is indeed a fulfilling hobby that can provide hours and hours of recreation.

Woodworking is not solely just a hobby which gives you any monetary advantages, but there’s a lot more to it than just being considered as a hobby. Woodworking is a pleasure that provides immense satisfaction offering a sense of belonging to you the end product is something that you will own. (Also check Ted's Woodworking course review if you are looking to learn woodworking). However, the second side of the hobby is that it also offers a financial gain that can also benefit you a little, if you can invest more time and effort in it.​

How do I start Woodworking?​

Once you have decided that you want to start woodworking, you need to figure out the necessary skills that are to be acquired in order to build products. Check whether you’re rich of materials that are required for a project. Also, you need to know that you can’t just read the online guides where things like “steer the saw in order to cut along the scored line using hand pressure” appear. Firstly, you need to know what a handsaw, a miter saw, or a dovetail saw looks like.

Therefore it is important to be well equipped with the tools to gain the necessary skills to tackle the project. Similarly, one also has to gain an overview or understanding about the wood. To do this, start with cutting a piece every day so that you can repeat the practice cuts every day. A few days later, you might as well start making changes in the shape and size of the cuts to learn how to handle internal pressures. The next step of woodworking is to understand the design process to keep the seasonal movement of the wood in harmony with the pieces and assemble them making sure that they don’t pull apart. Different types of wood have a wide range of seasonal expansions and should be dealt differently with the mixed species.

Over the projects, you will start working more accurately and faster by marking the wooden pieces according to the design. When you’re using rulers, start being precise about them. Scribing lines, using marking knives, using woodworking tools and making accurate cuts are much-needed skills in the woodworking projects. An art form as it is, you will keep on getting better if you practice and if you don’t; you will tend to mess up while you scrap the wood.

Where can you learn Woodworking?

Learning woodworking can be divided into types based on what your goal is. If you want to make a living out of woodworking or if you just want to refrain it as a hobby to make small scale projects for family/colleagues/friends or at home; the woodworking sources should be different. Most of the people learn woodworking from magazines, books, websites and other video portals like YouTube, Vimeo, etc.

Other than, having a tutor or taking a scholarship course would be an ideal way to learn. There are many woodworking schools, courses around the world in different countries but some of them can be a little costly, and the best way is to buy your tools and then take up the course.

Free Woodworking Plans, Projects and Patterns

1. Animal Shelter Plans

Winter Feeder​

This plan can be used to place the wilderness of all the herbivorous animals inside it during the winter to prevent the animals from starving during the winter climate and the deep snow. This project is easier to make and can keep an association between the pet owner and the pet when you place the shelters at your place by building few feeders that can be placed into the wood.

You can bring hay to the birds once in every 4-5 days by walking through the snow. It is not only a nice experience to you but can also be very helpful and amusing to the wild animals which are too weak to survive certain winters.

When you provide a feeder like this, the food that is stored in the snow can gain few salt lumps as this ingredient keeps a lot of herbivorous animals warm in the winter.

You can find the material in any store as the whole feeder is made of wood and it depends on your budget, what type of wood that you want to use.

You can go with the wood that is usually used for lifting the roof of the structure. It is also possible that the measurements can be different for different wild animals and you just have to adapt the measurements to the material that you’re using.

Insect Cages

Did you ever want to have another pet other than a dog or a cat? Did you ever want to have an insect but are too worried about how to store them? This insect cage, which can be built very easily can be filled with beautiful and enthralling insects to learn their behavioural patterns, watch them just be there; eating, sleeping and also breeding. This insectarium can be installed either at your home, laboratory, landscape, schools and also can be given to the kids as educational kits to make them aware about the insects.

While starting with this woodworking project, make sure that you pay attention while cutting the edges as most of the times, they don’t overlap as firmly as they should be.

Before the settling, cover the cage’s bottom with paper so that you can clean the interior of the cage very frequently.

On the top of the cage and the side walls, mount a net (of mosquito net kind) to keep the cage protected from other insects. This is important because you don’t want your insects to go out of the cage and as well as you don’t want other parasites to come inside the cage as well.

If you’re trying to breed insects that need high humidity, you should try putting glass instead of nets.

2. Baby Accessories

Baby Cradle

When a new member is coming into the family, the whole family gets overwhelmed. This period is the exception for the family, and we tend to welcome the baby with a gift to savour a moment. Therefore, a father or say a grandfather can now make a baby cradle and build an enduring moment with the baby. The baby in his/her first weeks usually sleep for 18 hours in a day and to make sure that the baby is getting quality sleep, it is important to provide a quality cradle that offers both comfort and safety. Later over the years, this cradle will also remain as a souvenir for the baby.

While making the baby cradle, choose a design that offers the maximum functionality and security and then go with checking the visual appearance. The plan provided here is perfect, and all you have to is to be flawless as any minute mistake has the tendency to ruin the cradle on the whole. This rocking cradle design is the classic, standard and also old-fashioned. The size of the cradle can be adjusted based on the baby’s size or the space that is available in the bedroom, and the transparency is a factor that is dependent on whether the parents want to keep a constant check on the baby or not.

Baby Rattle

Baby Rattles are the first toys that babies are habituated to, and therefore, they have a strong influence in developing the audio-visual senses of the baby. Rattles are being used by the babies since ancient times, and they were actually in the form of little balls previously that used to rattle when they are shaken. But later with the development of industries, they started to be more colourful and diverse with different designs.

A Rattle helps in improving the vision, concentration, hearing and also the motion coordination of the baby. Therefore, the first rattle is supposed to be vivid, simple with contrasting colours and the later ones should be replaced with complex ones. This particular heirloom is strictly designed for babies who are older than 5 months where the baby can consciously take a particular object into the hand. The baby’s attention can be developed well because of the round shape and its ability to hold onto the rattle easily. We can also use some very light wood for the rattle so that it will not be too heavy.​

3. ​Box Plans

Antique Jewellery Box

Women share a very special and intimate relation with the jewellery. Whether it’s an expensive jewellery piece, an heirloom or decorative gifts or even a wedding ring, they treasure the jewellery boxes as much as they treasure the jewellery. Many innovative jewellery designs are coming into the market these days, but nothing can beat an antique jewellery box. The boxes when designed in a customised way have the perfection and a unique spirit embedded in them.

This very systematic plan of the traditional wooden jewellery box will be an authentic addition to the top chest of the woman in your life, no matter who she is; be it your wife, mother, daughter, sister, a friend or some one else. The plan has two drawers that are used to hold the jewellery, and it only will take few days to craft this beautiful little piece.​

Vertical Wooden Spice Box

Why are that wood and kitchen are the two words that stay apart so much even when we know that we can articulate the outlook of the entire kitchen by adding wooden elements to it? Spices are the key ingredients to the kitchen, and this is the reason why we find a lot of canisters, pepper boxes and spices bottles in the kitchen. This vertical spice rack box acts as an efficient kitchen utensil and a user-friendly kitchen tool.

You will be surprised with the ease of the wooden boxes and how it can help you to grab the spices including paprika, pepper, curry, salt easily wither with hand or using a spoon just by sliding the lid of respective boxes in the spice rack. The dimensions can be changed based on your need and the amount of spices that you want to insert.​

4. Furniture Designs​

Plant Holder

Plants hold beauty to the home. The intricacy of the interiors get elevated by planting new plants that bear either beautiful flowers or just are of lush green. By providing proper care to them, you can allow them to grow and blossom as well. This wooden corner plant holder is the perfect way to bring the plants from the exterior to the interior. You can either place so many flower pots on it irrespective of size and shape or you can creepers on it and simply elevate everything.

All you need to is carefully measure the corner plant holder carefully as mentioned in the guide. All the measurements measured are in millimeters and if you find anything in inches, you can convert them into millimeters as well. However, different type of woods have different workabilities and therefore, make sure you know the wood entirely before choosing it be it cedar, maple, birch, alder or beech.​

Towel Stand

Towels are usually scattered all over the home because there are very few homes that have towel holders or spaces allowed with anchors on the wall. This particular towel stand can either be placed in your bathroom, in the kitchen or even in the living room where you can leave the towels to dry. They can be transported from one place to the other place and can be placed before the heater or the radiator in cases when you want the towels to be dried out quickly.

Another major advantage of using the towel racks are that they can also hold linens, pillow covers, bed sheets, napkins until you iron them and put them away after cleaning. You just have to cut the wooden board, clean them and then smoothen the surfaces before you assemble the towel stand. Just coat the stand with white paint or enamel and give a nice finish to make it look royal.

5. Garden Furniture Plans

Backyard Seating Plan

Enrich your garden and get the most of it by placing this simple, elegant and extremely light weight wooden seating set that acts as an open suite and an adorable outdoor element in your backyard. Standing out to be one of the best garden furniture element, it is extremely ideal for open spaces like the summerhouses, the cabins or the garden where you can get an entirely different experience.

The suite is not similar to the classic seats, but can still give you the classical experience, and they are foldable, so you don’t have to worry about transporting it or repairing/restoring it in every season. Just carefully cut the parts according to the measurements that are given in the drawing with precision in millimetres and inches and then assemble it carefully with right kind of overlaps before you finish it and place it in the garden.

Beach Chair

This Wooden Beach Chair is foldable and is extracted and modified from the beach chair design of the 1920s. Therefore, this model is like a hundred years old, and the only reason why it’s being sustained even in the generation is that the beach chairs don’t age and that even the classical models can survive the best in the contemporary era. This particular beach chair can be used as either at the side of your pool, on an open terrace, in the backyard or even in your garden. As it is foldable, it is handy and can be carried to places if you’re going for a vacation on a sea or going for camping across the river. Unlike the traditional plastic chairs, the beach chairs are not hard and uncomfortable which is why they last over the years.

Despite the wooden frame, you just have to replace the fabric in years and add some colours, additions to make it look new and creative. Talking about the plan, the whole body of the beach chair is supported by authentic fabric which stays attached to the frame at the feet level and the head level alone. The body of the fabric is not in contact with the frame and acts as a support for the human body while it offers comfort and relaxation under the sun. The joy is extreme when the chair is assembled with reliable fasteners. You can also customise the chair by making some joints movable and some joints rigid so that the chair can take recumbent positions as well.

6. Fitness Equipment Plans

Squat Rack Plans

The Squat rack plans, being one of the most used gym equipment plans is a power device that is used as a part of weight training. It indeed functions in the form of a mechanical spotter for squats combined with weights and barbell, dumbells exercises without any restrictions in the movement that are imposed by the equipment like say, Smith Machine. The general design is simple, and all you need to do is form a wooden frame out and support it with four upright bars and posts known as supports and pins along with other necessary attachments as given in the guide.

Press Dip Bars

The Press Dip bars helps in the unique sculpting of the upper body in a faster way with angled grips, asymmetric frames and also the chest and triceps dips that are provided by the machine. The design is full-fledged and extremely compact that it can sit straight in the small spaces like offices, homes and apartments. All the compound exercises can be done with the press dip bars where you can deliver faster results including bodyweight rows to balance both the shoulder and chest development. Follow the simple and lightweight design plan given in the guide and make a Press dip bar at a cheaper cost and get benefited from the perks.

Conclusion​

That being said, there are many other free plans, projects and patterns that you might find on the web and all of them are simple to use. While the given plans are a bit orthodox and with Google and Auto Desk putting their full efforts to make designing easy with either AutoCAD or SketchUp; woodworking can be even more customised. Both the software can be downloaded officially from the website and are upgradable to the pro version after the free version is entirely useable.

You can find thousands of tutorials on Google, Pinterest regarding the woodworking where you can download the plans and view them in CAD or just start designing your own furniture with measurements. SketchUp, on the other hand, will give you a view of how your design is going to look in 3D software with the push/pull option that makes the 3D modelling easier than you could have ever imagined. Also, there are many magazines and many tutors that you can avail online and we are one of them who are dedicated in publishing and providing access to many interesting and creative woodworking projects that suits the woodworkers of all levels, say the beginners, the intermediate workers or the experts so that you can raise your interest in woodworking and also can get benefited from it.

So, start working on any of the above mentioned free plans and also keep subscribed to our website for more woodworking plans, projects, patterns, tips and tricks, updates as we are equally curious in woodworking as any one of you, who are looking forward to excel in it.